Playlist For | Week 2

Hey. Good yeah. Good morning still. Yeah. It's good to be here.

When I was a little kid, I was out walking and with my dad kinda hiking through the little mountains that we live near. And he kept saying stay with me because there was a little bit of a looked like a giant cliff to me. It's probably 10 feet drop off.

And and as I'm walking with him, kept running away and looking over the edge, kicking rocks, and and just mesmerized by looking over the edge. And he kept saying, hey. Stay over here. Stay with me.

It's dangerous. There's loose rocks. You could slip and you could fall. And I kept doing it, kept doing it, kept doing it. And then finally, I went over, and I saw and I saw, like, a lizard or something on the side. And I leaned over even more, and I slipped, and I started to and I fell.

And as I closed my eyes, I get I'm gonna die. I sensed I wasn't falling anymore. And then I started going up, and I thought, am I dead? Did I am am I ascending to heaven or something? And then I opened my eyes, and I realized my dad had caught me as I fell and and picked me up. And he looked at me and says,

what did I just tell you? Stay with me. You'll be safer that way. Put me down, and I was like, thanks, dad. I gave him a hug. Thank you for saving me. And then about two minutes later, guess what I was doing? And he's like, what did we just talk about? And then I thought about that in the message today, And I realized,

I think I do that a lot with God, and maybe you do too, where where where where we really love that he saves us,

but we tend to not wanna listen to him when he's trying to shepherd us. We we we we like that he'll save us, but we we wanna just do what we wanna do. And sometimes when he's grabbing us and and pulling us back, we're not we haven't fallen yet. And we're we're like, what's going on, God? What's happening?

And and that's what we're gonna see today in our our playlist message here where we're going through the book of Psalms and talking about what worship is. We're gonna see in the the the big idea is simply worship is trusting the shepherd, not just thanking the savior.

Now when we worship, we praise and worship. We need to thank him for for for what he's done. That's definitely a part of worship. But if we only think of it that way, it never gets to the depth and the intimacy it needs to be. And and so our struggle is we'll thank him for saving us.

But do we trust his voice to shepherd us?

And that's really what the first part of of the book of Psalms is about. We opened it up last week. Psalms is a 150 of them. They're actually poetry with wisdom and all of that. But they were written and used as songs. And David, who wrote most of of this first section, was writing them as songs.

So they would sing them. They would use them for worship, and it ties into worship. And so they all have themes. The 150 Psalms are broken into five different books. It's almost like they made five albums. You can imagine their album covers. And and and this first section

is, do you trust the Lord as your shepherd? Basically, do you trust to follow him? Not just to rescue you, but do I do I follow him because he saves me?

And and that's really the theme of this. And so we are gonna take for the next few weeks, we're gonna take one psalm out of each of these albums, you would say, and we're gonna look at the lyrics, and we're gonna look at what it really means when it comes to worship.

And and what does it mean for our life? Because worship is more than just singing. Worship is surrendering to the voice of the Lord. That's what it's about. And and and this Psalm is the most famous Psalm in this section, Psalms 23, which most people know of from funerals.

You think that's the funeral Psalm. This Psalm is not about death. It's about dependence. And David writes it. And King David who writes this, he was a warrior, but he was a king. He was a poet. He he he was a a musician. I mean, he was like he would have been on the Disney Channel. You know? Like, he he had it all.

Multitalented. But he started as a young man as a shepherd. And he is writing this psalm that the theologians say, the setting of when he's writing. And he's older. He's been king. And he's in a valley somewhere waiting to have to go to battle with his son Absalom who has rebelled against him and raised up an army of 12,000,

and he has about 700 men with him. And he's torn up. If you go read the story, he just does not wanna have to kill his son. He feels so bad And all these things, and part of what he feels bad is his son kind of rebelled because he wasn't a very good father. So he has all of that going on

when he writes this song of worship. And what it teaches us is how to trust the shepherd, not just think a savior. And there's in three parts. If this was made into a video, it'd be it's like it has three different location shoots.

It starts in a green pasture. It moves into a dark scary valley. And then it ends around a feasting table in a home, in a house. And each one of them are saying something to us about what does it mean to worship with trust

of the shepherd. So I wanna start the first three verses.

Scene one, the the green pasture. The Lord is my shepherd. I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows. He leads me besides peaceful streams. He renews my strength and he guides me along the right paths bringing honor to his name. I wanna start taking this verse apart with that last phrase, honor to his name. Why does he do all this? Why does he take care of me? To bring honor to his name. What that simply means for you and me is, God loves you and me, takes care of you and me, rescues you and me, invites us to trust and follow you and me

because of who he is, not because of who we are. I'll say it again. God loves us because of who he is, not because of what we do, not because of who we are. That's a critical point that should be very encouraging to you. You can't earn his love. He loves you because that's in his nature. And he loves us so much he saves us

that we should choose to let him shepherd us, not to try to prove our love for him or get him to love us. It should be that we realize just how much he loved us. So maybe his plan is the right plan, and we should follow him. The more you realize who God is and what he's how much he loves us

and it's not a pressure on us to perform, the easier it is to engage in what real worship is. Because when you see the savior for who he really is, you can sing to the savior with all of your life, not just a song.

And so what he's saying here is and then he says, he's my shepherd. He starts with that. Go back to the first. That's saying, you know what? That's not a compliment David's saying. He's been a shepherd. When he says, Lord is my shepherd, he's saying, I'm a sheep. And sheep are stupid.

And he knows that. I I don't understand. You as you know, all animals that we we we have a flocks of and we domesticated herds of them. It's the problem is they were all wild at once at some point. I don't know how sheep ever work.

I mean, you're around sheep, they they don't see very well. They worry all the time. They get very timid. They're they're kinda stubborn. They like to wander. They like to wander even though they they they can't protect themselves. They can't protect they have no way to protect themselves.

They bite weekly. You know, they they they're they're like how did they ever exist? I mean, God created them to be food or something. That's not it. And and so he knows that. So when he says, I'm a sheep, he's all he's admitting the fact that he is that way. The Bible says that we are all like sheep and have gone astray.

And he says, but the Lord is my shepherd. Then he describes what the Lord does. And David understands what this is as a shepherd. He says, I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows. In some of the older translations, I I I actually normally, I think this translates the clearest,

but some older says, he makes me lie down in green pastures. I think that captures what he's doing. He's actually making you lie down. Sheep would get so nervous that if they're in a setting they're not sure of, they won't lie down. They won't rest. So the shepherd would, like, sweep the legs

and make them calm them and make them lie down. He would have to do that. And then said, he guides me. He leads me besides peaceful streams. Some of the older translations say still waters. Because sheep are afraid of moving water. They won't drink out of it. If you got a stream that's, like, moving a little quickly,

they will sit there, stay away from it, and die of dehydration before they'll drink that water. I think they're afraid that if I touch it, it's gonna suck me in, and I'm gonna go down, kinda like how we get some of these. We're so afraid. If I go near that, God called me to go trick of that. That water, that looks scary.

That's gonna suck me down and take my life away. So what the the shepherd would do, what David used to do is he'd go find some big rocks and throw them in the stream or the river whatever and try to build just enough of a dam that just makes the water slow down a little bit, right, in one section. So they'll go drink.

So in other words, what he's saying here is he learned this and we need to learn this to trust the shepherd with our needs. Point number one. He's the one that does take care of us. But sometimes what we think we need is not what we need. And what he knows he needs, he has to make us lie down.

He has to still water so we'll go drink it. Because otherwise we're afraid of it. And I think we do that because what he's really saying is the deepest human issue that we have is not merely sinful behavior. It's self rule. We like that God saved us. We resist him shepherding us.

We we we we wanna be the shepherd. We want him to bail us out, but we wanna control where we're going.

Someone sent me this and I stuck it in my bible last week. They gave it to me. They said it was a joke they thought I would like. And so I put it in there. I found it yesterday morning when I opened my bible again. So now you know how I prepare my sermons. Hey, this will do. No.

And it says this, a German shepherd, a Doberman, and a cat have died. All three are faced with God who wants to know what they believe in. The German shepherd says, I believe in discipline, training, and loyalty to my master. Good, says God. Then sit down on my right side. The Doberman,

another German dog, what do you believe in? Asked God. The Doberman answers, I believe in the love, care, and protection of my master. Said God. You may sit at my left. Then he looks at the cat and asks, and what do you believe in? And the cat answers, I believe you are sitting in my seat.

We laugh because that's what a cat would probably do.

But do you ever do that?

Do ever kinda want take the seat that's God's? I'll come to church. I'll thank him for saving me. But there's things in my life that I will not do that he said to do. That's taking the seat. I don't trust him. I do it. I think I'm pretty normal, so I'm pretty sure most of us struggle with this.

And here's the problem. When we act like the cat, our worship becomes catatonic. It does. It just becomes it becomes kind of empty. It becomes kind of just a motion you go through.

It becomes this thing, well, I have to go do that or else, you know, God's gonna be disappointed and then something worse might happen. We create these weird things in our head about this. And really, the primary thing that's a problem for sheep is they worry. They're afraid of things. They worry all the time.

And if they don't listen to the voice of the shepherd, they get themselves in trouble. And I think that's one of our biggest problems. We worry. Psychologists talk about two things, worry and rumination. And they say worry is defined as replaying fears about the future. So we're worried about what's out there,

we and don't even know what's gonna happen. But he says even more damaging is rumination. And that is it says it's replaying pain from the past. So you're worrying about the past and stuck in the past. You can't do anything about that. It already happened. But you also can't do anything about the future

because it hasn't happened yet. Yet we worry about both of those. And when you when you're stuck in the past and worrying about the future, you go nowhere in your present. You you you just we just get stuck. And and and they say rumination actually is the number one cause of anxiety and depression,

is being stuck worrying about something that's already happened. So we get stuck in all this worry. And and and and here's what's crazy. A Penn State study, over with chronic worriers found that 90% of what they worry and feared never happened. Never happened.

Now here's the thing. Here's how to know if you're a chronic worrier. If what you just thought was, but what about that ten percent? I wanna know what that is. That terrifies me. I get it. Because somehow we think worrying will control something.

I know you won't say it out loud. I don't say it when you say it out loud, it just sounds stupid. That my worrying about that actually did something other than raise my cortisol and and and ruin my relationships.

I I go, you we know we won't when you say that, but we do. Somehow, we think if I don't worry, I'm bad. Somehow, if I don't worry about this, something worse is gonna happen. And and and I did this. I you you know, I've told you guys this before. I've confessed. I like going places I hate getting there.

I hate getting back worse. Africa is the worst.

I love being there. I dread getting there. Took me forty two hours to get there this last year. I agreed to go with my friends to Kenya primarily because I go, how do you get back? And it was a much shorter trip. It was like twenty three hours to get back from Kenya. So I said, alright. I'll finish at Kenya with you guys, extend the trip four days

so I can shave off some time coming home. So then we get to the airport, and I just wanna get home. And and all a sudden, our flight leaving Kenya left late. So now I'm looking at our our turn our turnaround time in Brussels where we had to land, And I'm like, this is gonna be really tight.

And then two friends going with me, like, it'll be no big deal. Just relax. Worrying about it is not gonna do anything. Plus, we're staying in the same terminal. It's it's international. All you have to do is walk to the other gate. It shouldn't be that hard. Well, I continued to worry, so I thought I gotta control this. So I looked it up. And he says, actually, I found out if you come in from Kenya, you have to go through a second security thing because they don't trust Kenya

in Brussels. And I said, now we're gonna go to security again. Well, I won't be that big of a deal. I go, it says it can get really crowded. And I don't wanna get stuck in Brussels with Jean Claude Van Damme. I wanna go home.

And and and so there and and I just kept saying, I'm so stressed. I go, guys, we gotta get ready. Hey. And when the plane's getting close, I'm like, you guys got your bag. You got I'm pulling their their carry on and handing it to them. You know, like, right when the plane's still moving kind of like they you know, sit down, sir. And I'm like, we gotta get off this plane.

You know, I'm not getting stuck here. I don't care if Belgian waffles are good. I'm going home. Because I said I'm I'm like ready. I go, we're pushing people out of the way, and we're gonna run to that thing. And we're like so wait. They all run by me. I'm like, come on. Come on. They're like, you're being ridiculous. No. I'm not. I'm saving the day. And then we go to the plot. It's like, out of the rest of the world, just go this way, and you get to go right to your gate. If you're from Kenya, you go down this dark hall.

And now we go down there. I'm waiting for the crowd. Turn the corner. Here's where they have the security checkpoint. There's no one there but us. Went right through. It took, like, ten seconds. We are actually waited the longest time at that layover than the other.

And and and as we're walking to the gate, eating Belgian waffles, I looked at my friends, and I go, you're welcome. For what? My worry saved the day. They go, how's that? My worry bent the will of the universe to my demands. And I go they go, do you know? Worry always works, man. You realize when I worry, 90%

of the stuff never happens. Worry works. Right? No. It doesn't. And I think that's one of the biggest things that holds back our worship of God is our needs. Because we don't trust that he really takes care of us. And when we won't trust that he's taking care of us, we will hold back ourselves from him. We'll hold back. I

can't give up that time to to to love somebody or to to serve. I got to keep all of my money and my resources and my time and all this because I barely have enough. We get a scarcity mentality in our lives. And that really comes down to not how much you have. It comes down to how much you trust.

And we won't lay down and we won't drink the still waters He's prepared for us. We run from it. We run from the water because it's too noisy and scary. We need to trust the shepherd with our needs. So how do you do that? What to do? A few things on the screen. Choose to worship when you start to worry.

A lot of us can't worship when we worry. We think I'm too worried to worship. No, that's the perfect time to worship. Just like my dad used to say, he always thought it was silly when people say, oh, they died broke. How tragic. And he goes, that's not tragic. That's good timing.

The best time to die, spent my last nickel. I'm out of here.

Pray instead of panic. Surrender instead of strive and trust when you wanna control. Trust the shepherd with your needs. Now we switch to the next location shoot for this song's video. Verse four.

And this is the what a lot of warriors worry about is this part. Even when I walk through the darkest valley, some trans the older translation is the valley of the shadow of death. I will not be afraid for you are close beside me, and your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. So there you go. A dark valley.

I don't like it. Sheep hated valleys, especially a dark one. They didn't like it. It was scary to them. And the only way they would let go is if they listened to the the the voice of the shepherd that calmed them as they went. If they got away from that voice or panicked, they'd run off and get themselves killed.

Here's the problem. They didn't like the Dark Valley, but they had to go through the Dark Valley to get to green pastures. Especially what's interesting in this history is David was a shepherd. And where he lived and shepherded, there was a little valley that was narrow called the Valley Of The Shadow Of Death.

It was a dangerous place. Wild animals would attack, but also criminals would rob. So it really was a scary place to go. But it was the way he had to take the sheep during certain times of the year to get them to the pasture and to the still waters.

So the sheep would freak out. But if they don't trust him, they're not gonna get through the valley and to the other side. And that's the thing you gotta remember. He didn't say you're gonna go into a dark valley and die like it's a cul de sac. He says you're gonna go through it.

And he goes he doesn't say around it either. That's the thing that makes us mad. We're like, well, if Jesus is with me, why doesn't he take us around it? Because there's a purpose in the valleys. And

if you wanna know what that purpose is, you can tell by just reading how the tonal shift and how how David is talking about God. In verse one to three, you'll notice he's talking about God. He lets. He leads. He renews. He guides. But what does he say in verse four? I will not be afraid, but you are

close beside me. Your rod, your staff, protect and comfort me.

In the green pasture, he's talking about God. In the valley, he starts talking to God. That's the point. That's the point. If we think a relationship with God is just to always be sitting in the good place that we think is good,

We're not gonna be as close to God. We're not gonna trust him as much. Valleys reveal what you really believe about God. Valleys reveal how much you really trust God. And valleys are the opportunity to go from having an informational relationship about who God is to an intimate relationship

with the God who actually loves you.

That's the point. The point is we need to trust the shepherd in our valleys. We need to trust him there. And David shifted from he to you. The pain transformed his worship from information and obligation to intimacy.

Have you let your valleys do that? Or have you been like the Bible says, and I like to do too is run off because of your fear and can't believe God's let you be in a dark valley? Do you run to the edge? Do you like, I like when you save me but I don't really like you shepherding me right now?

Because it's interesting. He ends that with your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. That's

the kind of the point he's saying. He's learned that both of them protect him and both of them comfort him. But the rod and the staff are two different things. You might understand that a shepherd would have a rod and a staff. The rod was this little knotted piece of bone that had a little piece on here so they can have a handle and they could throw it. And a good shepherd got pretty good at throwing these and like could hit a wolf or something at at about 50 yards.

They they the cardinals should sign one of them as a quarterback. And and and and then they could do that. So he says, your rod, obviously, we like the rod because the rod is protecting us from the problems out there that could that attack us.

The staff, you know what the shepherd's staff is, but the, you know, long pole. You know what that was for? I call it a throat punch, but this was the original version. It's a throat pull. That was to protect the sheep from themselves.

And it would be you'd wrap it around one that's getting into something dangerous or gonna go that way or doesn't wanna listen, and it would grab it around the neck and just yank it back in the line. That's what the staff was for. The staff was protecting the sheep, but a sheep probably thought that was uncomfortable.

And when God uses the rod the rod, we like the rod, but I think we struggle with the staff. Because when we don't wanna listen, sometimes sometimes that struggle you're going on, sometimes that that that that tug feels like, you know, God's yanking your chain or you think something is. God's doing that on purpose.

He's doing it on purpose because he's trying to get your attention. He's trying to protect you. And what David's realizing is this this this this older king that was a shepherd sitting there going, my son rebelled and it's not all his fault. He's realizing that that staff of God trying to pull him back

was not holding him back. It was pulling him back towards love and life.

And that brings him comfort now. How about you? Do you trust him in your valleys?

What can you do about that? Here's some practical steps that'll keep us understanding what's going on and worship deeper and be intimate with God. Stop interpreting pain as abandonment. Pain does not mean God abandoned you. It says He's right there with you. He will take you through. Stop assuming silence means absence

and stop demanding immediate explanations. See, sometimes I think silence means he's not there and demanding immediate explanations. Why isn't he answering me? And remember that God gives presence before he gives answers.

It's kind of like this when you think about those demands and you think we do this and we think we're justified. But you know who else does this? If you're a parent, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Kids.

Because we say he's not answering me. He's silent. A lot of times you think God's being silent when he's very present, and he's probably already spoken. The reason we think he's being silent is because he's not giving us the answer we want. You see, yes is an answer. Wait is an answer, and no is an answer.

And sometimes we gotta trust God that he knows better. Just like when your kids come to you and they ask for something, and you're like, no, sweetie. No. That's just not a good idea. Or wait. We have a plan for that, but what's happening later? It's not timing yet. And they get mad.

And they keep asking you, but why can't they do it? What about now? What about now? And you answer them. You answer them every time. You give them 500 different ways of explaining. You drew a picture for them. You wrote a mathematical formula if your kid's smart and said, here, you'd add it up. Two plus two equals no. So here here you go. And and you're doing every way you know. And then finally, you're just so frustrated, you just stop talking. And then they're like, why aren't you answering me?

And what's the answer? I already have in a thousand different ways. What they're actually screaming at you is, why aren't you giving me what I want?

And when I think about that and I read this passage and I pray to my Lord and I really get real with him in worship and prayer, I have to confess that I do that a lot with God. Even trying to do what God's asked me to do.

I lead a church. There's a lot of things we wanna get done. God wants us to reach people for Jesus. I start doing what he wants. And I'm like, you know, we really need God. We need more seats in here. We need this. And then I get impatient. I'm like, God, why isn't this happening? What's going on? And then I'm frustrated with him. I'm like, why are you not doing the things that you called me to do? Why are you not giving me this? Right? And I'm like, keep up is what I'm saying. God, why can't you keep up? Why do you keep I feel like I'm telling God, k, quit looking over the edge of that and get with me. We got stuff to do.

So I almost hyper spiritualize. I'm not trying to run after something selfish. I'm like, I'm trying to do what you told me to do. Why are you dawdling? And then I realized that God says, wait, because I'm doing something that you can't even understand.

I'm like, oh, fine. Walk off like my kids and grandkids do. We need to trust him in those valleys because ultimately, it ends with verse five and six.

And he switches he switches the the context here from away from sheep and shepherding in fields and valleys to a table and a feast in a home. It's almost as if he's shifting to understand that I'm not really a sheep god. He understands that with a relationship with God, I'm now a son.

And it goes beyond just being a sheep. And he becomes an honored guest. He says, you prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessing.

So he says he's saying, if you trust me, I prepare a feast in the presence of your He's sitting in a valley in the presence of an attack of overwhelming force from his own son. And he realizes that God still set a feast before him, that he can have peace, he can have contentment, he can still be kind of saddened,

but he can have these things despite what's going on around him. That's what the New Testament says, is a peace that surpasses all understanding. The only way you can have a peace that surpasses all understanding is having a peace in a context when most people wouldn't have peace.

And if we as Christians keep thinking peace only comes when my surroundings are all fixed, we're missing the whole point of the power of the Holy Spirit. And we usually miss it because we don't engage in actual worship. Because actual worship is surrendering to the voice of God, surrendering to his shepherding. It's not just singing a song thanking somebody for doing something for us

a couple thousand years ago. It goes way beyond that. And then when it says, you honor me by anointing my head with oil. He says, now he's made me. He's honored me. He loves me so much. He's making me an honored guest. He's making me family basically.

And he says, my cup overflows with blessing. That's got some power symbolism to it. See, when you went and were a guest in someone's home, you were family visiting or whatever, when you'd go feast at the table, the the host would pour your cup of wine, and he would pour it to overflowing.

And he would keep it overflowing the whole night. Whenever he saw it down, he'd pour it and pour it and pour it. And then there would come a day when it would stop doing that. He wouldn't pour it to overflowing, and he wouldn't refill it all the time to overflowing. That was the signal it's time to leave.

We should reinstitute that around the holidays when family comes and stays with us. That way you don't have to have the awkward conversation of, so how long were you planning on staying? And instead, you just

he didn't pour the oh, you get up in the morning, the orange juice doesn't get poured all the way overflowing. We gotta pack after breakfast. It's time to go. But he's writing it here in the sense that God always does that. Always we're invited to the table. Always he will fill our cup overflowing.

And the blessings, we always think, well, I don't feel I'm over What he's talking about is I will overfill your life with the blessing of my presence and all that comes with it. Most of us, or at least I do, often get confused between presence and a present.

I want the present from God. I want to open up the good things I want. And God says, no, that's not. I'm about the presence of myself

Because that's what we need. And that's why he says the next line. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life and I will live in the house of the Lord forever. That word for pursue, it means to aggressively chase down.

The word there for unfailing love is the word has said. It means a covenantal loyal love that refuses to walk away. So he chases us down and will not stop chasing us down. To do what? With goodness. He is chasing us down aggressively with goodness all the days of our life and

we will be with him for all of eternity in his house. He's saying you need to trust me with your future. We have to trust the shepherd with our future. Instead of worrying about those things out there, trust that he is pursuing us always. He will never stop. And he's pursuing us with goodness. Not not badness,

goodness. Now somebody's like, I don't feel like that because it feels like I'm getting yanked around and it feels like I'm not getting the good things. And once again, we have to understand the meaning of the word goodness in this passage. It's written in Hebrew.

Goodness when we think of goodness, we think of all the things I like. We think of nothing but calm and peace, better jobs, better house, better relationship, better friends, you know, you know, stuff like that, better football teams that represent your city, you know, all those things.

And and and and that's what we think. So we think we we have redefined goodness. The word in the Hebrew means this. It means beautifully beneficial. Beautifully beneficial. It means God will pursue us with what we need. It's beautiful because it's what we need. It's beneficial. It's kinda like back to the kid illustration.

I mean, how many things have you pursued your kid with to do something that's beautifully beneficial for them and they keep running away? Brush your teeth. Eat your vegetables. You know? Just trust me. We need to wash your hair. No. The soap's gonna get in my eyes. You know? Do your homework. Go to school.

Move out. You're 28 years old. You know, all those kind of things that are beautifully beneficial. And and and and then they don't get it because he's saying he learned

that it's like that rod in the staff again. It's the staff moments. He's trying to do something beneficial. He's gonna pursue us with that. And if we redefine goodness, we get frustrated or confused, and we don't understand. David's writing his own mind. He's like, I get it now. I get it now.

Those moments were beautifully beneficial for me whether I realized it or not. For example, got any kids in here? Who's someone? You're not that much of a kid, but you look like someone that doesn't like to go to bed and doesn't like to comb his hair. Just kidding. You don't like having a bedtime, do you?

You'd rather just stay up all night, play your favorite video game, eat bad food. It's frustrating going to bed. Correct. Who's sitting next to you? Grandma. Guess what is the favorite time of the day for grandma?

Going to bed. The thing you hate the most, you will come to find it's your favorite thing to do. So you got that look to look forward to. Good luck. May the odds ever be in your favor. You see? When we trust the Lord and we grow and learn to trust a shepherd, not just sing to a savior, not just thank a savior,

but trust a shepherd, we grow up. The intimacy helps us see. We get through a valley and we see the goodness on the other side. The problem is we have to see what goodness really is. And so what this does is worship, choosing to listen to him, it retrains us to recognize goodness that we once overlooked,

I. E, suffering that formed us, failure that humbled us, valleys where God carried us, and pressure that deepened my dependence upon him and took my faith from informational and transactional and obligatory to intimate and powerful and meaningful.

And it happens when we trust the shepherd with our needs, we trust the shepherds in our valleys, and we trust the shepherds with our future. So even if your life right now feels like it's losing, this doesn't feel beneficial. He promises we live in the house the Lord forever. What he's saying is we ultimately won.

We win when we trust the shepherd. It doesn't matter how, he says, no matter how good or not good you feel like it is, it will be fantastic in the end.

And if it's not good, it's not the end. It'll get there and all of the valleys will be meaningful because you trusted him. When I was a my son was in middle school. I volunteered to coach their middle school baseball team at the school.

And, so I went over there, and they had I liked it because it was like one week of tryout practice and the game started, and then there was eight games, and then the season's over. And so I I go, and my son came in. You know, he played some baseball. He liked baseball. He he liked baseball the most. He wasn't the best at baseball. He's better at other sports, but he liked baseball because he liked to talk the most. So he liked the sports where you can talk more. In baseball, you stand around a lot. So he liked it. And so he played a few season, in and out, all that. So we go and we go to this tryout, there's only eight kids show up. You need at least nine to have a team. So first of all, we're short kids. I go home. I tell my wife that. She goes, well, how was it? Are they any good? And I said, well, they need to bring some friends. That was my first assignment, was somebody you gotta bring at least a couple friends back where we don't have a team.

And then I go, well, how else was it? I go, well, let me just tell you this. Our son was by far the most experienced superior player on the field. And my wife said these words, dear God, you're not gonna win a game all season, are you? And I said, no. The other seven, I had to teach them how to throw a baseball.

And not like better. Like, hey, they're middle scorer. They didn't even know how to hold a baseball and throw it. And and then and then half of them held the bat wrong way and didn't understand. I'm like, where has your father failed you so miserably?

You know? It's like, what's going on? So I spent that first week not even really practicing. It was like, I have to teach you what the game of baseball is. They did bring some friends back. But think about it. These kids never played sports, never played baseball. They they're excited to be on the team. Guess what kind of friends they could get to come play?

So more of that. So we play. And then I'm hoping I'm hoping that,

you know, most of the kids that are good at baseball run a club sport. Maybe they're all playing for their club team, and they're not playing. So if all the other schools are the same, maybe we got a shot. So we show up the first game, and the other team was was this team that it was the the club

their club coach was the coach. And he said, let's have a shorter, easier season and not have to travel. We'll just all play for our school. And so it's a club. They came out there looking like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball warming up. And

I'm watching that. I go, this is awful. And here's the worst part. When you have a team of kids that have never really played on a sport team, it's 03:00 in the afternoon. We're playing this game. Every dad on my team showed up. There's, like, two people for the other team. Every mom showed up.

They brought their little brothers and sisters who made go cheer signs for them. It was nuts because they're like, we we it might be the only time we ever experience our kid doing this. We're all in. So I got this huge crowd. Yeah. And they're all excited. And I'm like, we are gonna get so destroyed

that fortunately, being a pastor and a communicator, I go, I gotta be prepared for this. I need to talk to these kids. And I positioned them right in front of where all the parents sat because I, by indirectly, wanted to talk to the parents at the same time.

And I wanted to prepare them. I wanted to manage the expectations here, but also encourage them on what they're here for. They're gonna go through some valleys. And how I did it was I used this. This is grapeshot for a cannon. It's British grapeshot.

They would shoot this out of a cannon. Like, imagine a cannon being a giant shotgun, and they had these bags of these or the shells, and it would shoot these out at troops. And and I told him, we know this is British because this comes a friend gave me said, this is from the American Revolution.

This was fired in the in in the American Revolution. And and we know it's British because at that time, we didn't have an army, a bunch of farmers. No one was trained. We didn't have the resources to even manufacture

this. So we did it old school. The cannons we did have, they'd throw nails and glass and whatever they did, the Pirates of the Caribbean version of it. And I said, guys, why do we call this British, not ours? Because we won. And we went into this war understaffed, under skilled, not prepared, and we lost most of the time.

Lost more battles than we won in that war. Whole first year lost pretty much every battle. But George Washington kept pulling an army together, and he said, I need them to be trained. They need to stick together, not quit, and learn how to fight. And so they did.

And they stuck together through thick and through thin, and they went through terrible. They didn't even have shoes in some of their fights. But they got better. And how they got better is he found soldiers that could train, that understood how to fight this way.

And they were they were a lot of French officers that came over. They didn't even speak English. They're trying to speak through a translator. The only thing that the all those soldiers understood that the French officers yelled out was when they did something right,

the French officer would yell out a French word for great job in celebration, hoorah. And he'd say, hoorah. And they knew that meant we did it right. And so they gained confidence from hearing that and they worked harder. And then they started actually from that moment, they started using hoorah as a battle cry,

which by the way is where we get hoorah, hoorah, and all of those slogans that the army and the marines and everyone hollers. It comes from that French hoorah. And I said, but they would hoorah and then go lose. They would hoorah and then go lose. But they stuck together and they learned. And eventually Hoorah

turned into The United States Of America. And I go, guys, I'm going to be honest with you. We're going to do a lot of losing. It's going to be ugly and it's not going to be pretty because you guys aren't prepared, you're not resourced, and they know what they're doing and we don't. But if you I promise you, if you trust me

and you work hard at practice, you keep a good attitude and you stick together, you'll grow, you'll learn from all that difficulty, and I promise you somewhere along the way we might surprise somebody. And they got excited. I saw dads crying. And

then one of the kids goes, he loved history, he goes, hey, can you bring that every game? Can we stack hands on it and that be our cry before we go on the field? I go, sure. So they got in and they go, hoorah. And they ran out and we lost 19 to nothing.

And and in the in that league, you know, in the younger sports, you play seven innings, and they have a mercy rule. If you're down by 10 or more after four, it's over. The ump came to me, and it was already 19 to nothing after three. And he told me something about this extreme mercy rule. Game's over now after three. And I go, I'm pretty sure you made that up. He kinda smiled at me. And then he told all the other umps, and they knew. They they they created a rule, the extreme mercy rule, to just not embarrass us so badly. And it would get dark before we would get to a fourth inning anyways.

And so we went out there, and so we now have this new rule. We got extreme mercy rule to play three innings. They showed up the next week. They worked really hard at practice. They got a little better. We went on the field. Hoorah.

16 to nothing. Extreme Mercy rule. Next week, they worked hard. They got a little better. Went out on the field. Hoorah. 15 to nothing. We almost got to a fourth inning. And then again, hoorah. Another Extreme Mercy. Hoorah. Another Extreme Mercy rule. We Hoorah.

Another extreme mercy rule. We are are o o and and seven, and we've only played 21 innings of baseball the whole season.

But what I was impressed is they kept together. They worked hard. They were better. But then we went into our last game. I was like, just hope they could do something. And it turned out our last game was against that first team that had ex they had mercy ruled every team they played starting with us,

and that was our last game of the year. And I'm like, dear Lord, please.

They went out. They all put their hands. Hoorah. And they ran out there and played their hearts out. And the game started like every other one, eight to nothing after the first inning, 13 to nothing after the second inning, 16 to nothing after the third inning, game's over.

We were eight for eight on Extreme Mercy Rule games. Game's over. There was one detail that was different this time.

We had the 16 runs. We had the 16 runs. I don't know how that happened. An act of God, Chuck Norris was on a hillside sniping guys when they tried to run. Our pitcher actually threw strikes.

It was crazy how it worked, but it did. And they got more and more excited as it got closer and closer. I'm like, man, we're not even gonna we're not. We go, we're still not gonna get to the fourth inning. It just flipped the script. You should have seen these players. They went so insane,

their parents crying, grown men crying. They were so excited. It was like they won the World Cup. They were gonna tear down school. And it was like they were like, yeah. And they they they they were running. They're like, thank you, coach. They were so excited. They were like, hoorah. Hoorah. Hoorah.

I mean, one and seven. I mean, we won one game. I mean, we're not even going to the playoffs. And it was like but they were like, yeah. They were so excited. They tried to pick me up, but they're middle schoolers. They failed at that too. And and it was it was crazy.

Parents hugging me, them thanking me. They got back on the bus. It was like they won it all. Why? Because they had been through all those valleys, and they shocked this little baseball world. Hoorah. That's the gospel. That's what it means to trust Jesus as shepherd, not just savior. Yeah. You can know him. He died for your sins.

But if you want the valleys to mean something and you wanna experience a victory on the other side of those valleys by trusting him, you want the ultimate hoorah, trust him.

Trust him as a shepherd. Because you know what? What Jesus did when he came was he had a losing season. I mean, he lost a game big time, at least what it looked like to us. The night before he died, he gave what seemed like a very confusing and demotivational speech to his disciples, didn't he?

He broke bread and said, this is my body broken for you. He took a cup and said, this wine is my blood spilled for you. Do this in remembrance of me? He then went out and did the biggest loss you think could happen. He died. He died. My team got killed a whole lot, but none of them died.

But then three days later, he dealt death in extreme mercy rule. And

And we have the greatest hurrah ever. So that's what communion is. We're gonna take it right now before we sing a song and be done. But communion is not just about remembering the sadness that Jesus went through. It's not just thanking him for saving

us. It's a moment to reflect on, am I letting him shepherd me? So as we get ready to take it, if if you know the Lord, just right now, just start thinking about where are you not letting him shepherd you? Where are you refusing to go where his voice is calling? And talk to him about that.

But before I we take this, I wanna invite some people to take that first step of trust. You see, like I said, we don't live for God's love. We live from it. The way you be being made right with God, the way you know to live in the house of the Lord forever

is you have to turn from your sin, turn from being self rule, turn from yourself, confess that, and say, I do believe that what Jesus did. I trust that he lived a life I couldn't live, died a death I couldn't come back from, and then beat death so I can have that life. And you actually are confessing

that and professing that in your life. And if you've never done that and you say, I wanna reach out and I wanna take Jesus' hand, whether you're in a valley or a green pasture, you wanna take his hand, hand him your sin. Say, hey, here's where I've blown it. Take it. And then take my hand and walk me into this life.

If that's you, you don't even have to say anything. I'll acknowledge that you have done that by just raising your hand. Just say, that's what I want right now. If you hold your hand up, you're saying yes to Jesus. You're taking that first step of trust. And, yeah, people are looking around.

But what does it matter? This is eternal life. This is everything. Join the the the the tons of people that have already done that this weekend.

So if you want that, just raise your hand right now. Just hold it. Hold it up high. See that hand. See those hands. See they're going up all over the room. See them in the back there. Even some of the back row Baptists.

Welcome to the family. Welcome to the table. Now you can take this for real for the first time. Let's pray real quick. Father God, I thank you that you brought us real life. I thank you that you came not just to save us, but to shepherd us into that life. And I thank you for all the hands that are up in this room right now,

that they've met you and put their faith in you for the first time right now. Amen. He took the bread and he broke it. He said, this is my body broken for you. Take and eat.

He then took the cup said this is my blood, spilled for the forgiveness of sins. Take and drink.

Hoorah.

Come on, churches, stand up. Let's turn our worry to worship, put our trust in the good shepherd as we sing.

Help us trust you, Lord.

Church, we serve the God who walks with us in the darkest valley, who prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies, and promises goodness and mercy that will follow us all the days of our lives, and we will dwell in his house forever. In light of that, let's worship. Come on, lift your voice.

Church. Come on. We saw people get baptized today. We saw people accept the Lord for the first time today. God is good. God is moving. Amen? Amen. Hey, well before you go, if you made that decision, we have an icon on the back of this chair. If you would just tap your phone to that, that'll answer help us

walk alongside of you as you made this decision to become a Christian. This life is not meant to be lived alone. So if you could tap that icon and we'll, get connected with you. Also, your next step as a Christian is baptism,

and we got leaders out there right now with towels, with a change of clothes, and with people ready to go. So if you wanna get saved and get dunked on the same day, two for one, there's no time like the present. Amen? So go ahead, out by the baptisms and we got people that will take care of you. Also, next weekend, we have our class, We Are Rock Point, where our pastor Bill and his wife, Carrie, they're gonna share the history and the mission and vision of Rock Point Church. So whether you've been here for a while or if this is your first time, this is a great opportunity to just know and get to learn what Rock Point is all about, and more importantly, how you can get connected and how you can join in on the mission of pointing people to Jesus by loving people like Jesus. We also have a prayer room to my right, your left, full of leaders that would love to pray with you if you just made that decision to follow Jesus or if you need any prayer of any kind. Well, we love you. Have a great rest of your weekend, and we'll see you next weekend. Take care.